


Find Your Place

by holtz_gives_no_flux



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, Female Characters, Magical Artifacts, Mystery, Original Character(s), Petra is a dumbass, a loveable dumbass, but like, in the best way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtz_gives_no_flux/pseuds/holtz_gives_no_flux
Summary: Petra Dominus has no place in the universe, no place in the Jedi order. Passed over to become a Padawan, she joins the ExplorCorps and unwittingly starts an adventure that will take her from the library of the Jedi temple to the front lines of the Clone Wars, to forbidding mausoleums and to the fulfillment of a legend of a Jedi powerful enough to extinguish a lightsaber. She will meet Jedi, Sith, Politicians, and Mandalorians alike. Change is coming in the universe, and it is time to make the Sith afraid again.It's gonna be a long one, my dudes.





	1. Chapter 1

The first time she remembered using the force was on her homeworld. It was a lush planet with a temperate climate and thick, heady forests. The inhabitants were mostly cabin-dwelling factory workers. She was born to a pair of them. Overworked, underpaid, and constantly blaming the other for it, neither had ever planned on having a child and for the most part acted as if they never had. It suited her just fine to be left alone; she spent most of her days running through the forest near her house with no agenda except to pick berries and make friends with the local wildlife. At least her parents didn't hit her or force her to work like the ohter kids' parents did. She was free to roam as she pleased. And today she was up early and craving an adventure, and she pleased to hike out to the cave. She would climb down into on the bank of the creek with the green water and see if she could find any river cats, or maybe pick up some glowing rocks that could be found in the deeper parts of the cave, where the air was cold and the rocks themselves were the only source of light.  
Her bare feet sprang along the forest floor as she ran through the woods, arms out for balance over the rocky ground, matted tawny hair blowing in the breeze behind her. She wore oversized pants drawn in at the waist and ankles and an apron she had stolen from her father in the pursuit of enough pocket space to carry all her treasures from the forest.  
She drew near to where she knew the cave to be, the whole thing only perilously covered with rocks and moss and very easy to twist an ankle on or fall through entirely if you were any bigger than a six year old. As she went along the ridge above the creek she ran over rocks and leaves and stopped to pick berries from the highbush thickets that ran through the forest and put them in her pockets for later.  
While she picked, hanging by one arm and one leg from a tree to reach, she heard movement in the valley. Not the scuffle of the river cats, either. Something big. Looking around, expecting the worst, she found not a bear, or a boar, but a woman. A woman in grey robes and brown boots and carrying a bag, with her salt and pepper hair tied up behind her with chopsticks. She was plain and stern looking, and she walked in slow circles, consulting a map.  
The kid jumped down from the tree, and the newcomer didn't notice. She crept in along the bushes until she was peering out from behind a rock not twenty feet away from where the woman was still pacing.  
"Who are you?"  
The woman jumped visibly, and looked at the rock, frowning. The kid was looking at her cuiously. Sensing no apparent danger, she jumped out from behind the rock and walked up to and slowly around the woman, tilting her head at the lightsaber on her hip.  
"What's this?" She said, reaching for it.  
"Don't touch that." The woman commanded, backing away defensively. She looked at the map again, then around at any landmarks she could find. The girl just continued walking around her, looking at her boots, her belt, feeling the fabric of the robes she wore. The woman sighed and set off in a different direction than she had been going. Bare feet followed crunching boot steps as the girl bounced along behind her.  
"Where are you going?" The girl asked cheerfully. The woman sighed.  
"I'm looking for something."  
"Oh. What are you looking for?"  
"That's none of your business."  
"Oh. Who ARE you?"  
"That's not any of your business, either." The woman said shortly, lenghtening her stride to try to get away. The girl kept up easily, even on short six year old legs.  
"Oh. Are you a jedi?"  
"Yes."  
"Are you looking for a jedi thing?"  
"Yes."  
"What kind of jedi thing?"  
"Crystals."  
The woman stopped suddenly and looked at the girl curiously, like she was seeing her for the first time.  
"Do you live here?" She asked her.  
"Yes?"  
"Are there any caves or caverns around here where colored crystals grow?" She asked earnestly, and the girl felt her ears getting red for being asked something so directly by an adult. SHe felt like she was in trouble.  
"Um... there's a cave, but there's nothing in there but some river cats and some weird glowing rocks."  
"Glowing rocks?" She asked. It was rare, but crystals COuld form in geodes. As for glowing... well, there was only one way to find out. Better than coming all this way for nothing. "Which way?"  
The girl pointed. "But-"  
Too late.  
The woman had taken three steps and with a crunch of rocks and moss had fallen into the shallow creek below with a tremendous splash and a yell.  
The girl looked down over the edge of the hole where the woman was illuminated in the circle of light she had just let into the cave. The woman layed in the creek bed, groaning. Wet robes clung to her as as she pushed herself up on her elbows trying to get out of the freeznig water. As she stood up, she cried out in pain and sloshed back down, crawling instead of walking onto the pebbly bank of the creek.  
"Hold on, I'm coming!" The girl said, and she raced around the hole and down the bank to where the mouth of the cave was. SHe waded through the emeralrd water to where the woman sat at the edge of the circle of light, holding her ankle.  
"Put it back in the water!" The girl directed  
"What? No. It's fine."  
"No, put it back in, I can fix it."  
"You can what?"  
"I can fix it! Lemme see."  
Before the woman could protest, the girl grabbed ahold of her ankle and put it back under the unnaturally cold water. SHe furrowed her brow in concentrartion as she rubbed it like she was rubbing way dirt and a cool tingling sensation spread under the skin beneath her fingers, killing the pain as it went. She recognized the sensation - the feeling of being healed by the force. This child, whoever she was, was using a skill that took the healers in the jedi temple years to master. It seemed to be a producat of the water, but she had harnessed the power of a place surrounded by the force and channeled it through her body to produce an affect- no small feat no matter who you were. She looked more critically at the child in front of her. Dirty and disheveled, with calloused hands and feet and clothes that were many sizes too big, and wondered who she might become with proper training.  
"What's your name?" SHe asked the girl as the last traces of pain and weakness left her injured leg.  
"I'm Petra!" She replied cheerfully. "What's yours?"  
"Jocasta." The woman replied. SHe stood up, wringing water from her robes and flexing her foot. "Thank you." SHe added. "SHall we proceed?"  
"Sure! The rocks are this way." Petra said and took off for the darkest part of the cave. They walked in silence, Petra leading the way. SHe kicked along the pebble beach and dragged her hand along the wall of the cave. There were lillies budding on lillypads and climbing up the walls, and the only sounds were the sounds of their footsteps, the occasional scuffle of the river cats, and the mesmerizing dripping of water from stalagtites into the water below. As they went, Petra picked buds off the walls and put them into her pockets, or held them in her hand to make them bloom and put them in her hair, as if all of it was completely trivial to her. And Jocasta supposed it was; this command of nature had probably always been there for her. No doubt enhanced by the cave, but not a product of it. Petra kicked through the water and skipped rocks, and Jocasta sighed with impatience as the followed this kid who was in absolutely no rush to get anywhere toward something she wasn't even sure would be here. Of course, if what she had already seen was any indication, this cave was a likely place for lightsaber crystals to grow.  
"Why are you looking for crystals, anyway?" Petra asked. Jocasta pinched the bridge of her nose. "They have properties that give them intese focal qualitieis in high energy application." She recited, quoting the literature that had brought her to this god-forsaken cave in the first place. Petra looked around at her, confused but undaunted.  
"Um, I don't know what that means." She said as they walked on.  
"It MEANS, they will be pure enough to use for lightsabers."  
"Really?! We're looking for lightsaber crystals?" Jocasta immidiately regretted saying anything.  
"Yes."  
"But... There's no crystals in here, I told you that. Just these." Petra said, bending down and picking up a perfectly normal looking, if a bit unnaturally round, rock about the size of an orange. She handed it to Jocasta. It was warm in her hand, and growing warmer. As the heat rose, the gray stone began to glow a true blue - the blue color of a lightsaber. SHe examined it more closely, looking for any signs of a fault to break the rock open. She set it on a nearby boulder and picked up another rock the size of a headstone, bringing it down in one smift stroke. With a loud crack the stone fell into two hollow pieces, and on the inside, a crystal bigger and brighter than any she had ever seen. SHe picked it up and examined it carefully, Petra coming around her to watch with a look of silent wonder.  
Jocasta took a viewing glass out of her bag and checked the crystal for purity, although she could tell just by looking the stone was practically flawless. Tucking the crystal and the viewing glss back into her bag, she looked around for more round stones. The problem was, on the rocky floor of the cave, they were completely indistinguishable.  
At least to her.  
"Petra." SHe said, turning to the girl, this strange little one, who could heal and find gems and make flowers bloom. "How did you find this?"  
"I dunno, they just look differnt."  
"Are there more?"  
"Sure! Uh.... This one." She said, handing Jocasta another perfectly ordinary looking rock. "And this one."  
They proceeded on for the better part of an hour, until Jocastas bag was heavy with rocks. Then Petra led her out of the cave, carefully around the fragile ceiling of the cavern and back into the forest. Petra stopped at the edge of the trees and looked at her feet.  
"So, if you have your crystals, are you taking them to the Jedi?" Petra asked, suddenly not so annoyingly cheery.  
"Yes."  
"Do you know how to get back?  
"Yes."  
"Oh. OK. Well, it was nice meeting you. If you need to find some more someday, I hope you come back."  
Petra turned and began to walk throuhgt the woods in the direction of her house. SHe got to help a real jedi today! She would like to go with her, wherever it was she was going. She knew she shouldn't want to just leave the planet with a stranger, but she felt like it would be ok Jocasta was smart, she thought. She wasn't as mean as she seemed.  
Jocasta sighed. She needed to leave, the transport was headed back at nightfall, but she knew it would be irresponsible to not at least report that she had found a force-sensitive child on the planet, so she sent a transmission to the jedi temple asking what she was to do, as she followed Petra back through the forest.  
"Petra, wait!" She called.  
The reply was quick and direct.  
-Bring the child to Coruscant-


	2. Chapter 2

Jocasta stopped for a moment outside the door of the wooden house Petra grew up in. The pause was the only outward sign she allowed of being nervous, despite no one there to see her. She had never done this before. She knew other Jedi, conventional knights, mostly, who had come across children to be trained and had to take them from their families. Knights who had witnessed tearful goodbyes and known that their children, if they survived to adulthood, would probably never return to their home. Everyone understood the importance of training a force-sensitive child properly, and no child was taken who didn't want to go except in extreme cases of negligence, but at such a young age the children often lacked the perspective to know exactly what they were getting themselves into.   
She certainly hadn't.  
She stood at the threshold and knocked.  
"'lo?'" A voice slurred from the couch. She stepped in.  
"Hello." She waited for the man to sit up. He was large and scruffy, with short, choppily cut hair, a round, red face, and pale, butcher blue eyes. He was clothed in little better than rags, his only accessory a leather belt with a hatchet hanging at his hip.  
"Can I help you?" He asked, in a bristly tone. Jocasta didn't like him much. The force bounced off him like it would a boulder in the forest; no personality to speak of, hardly any room between sleeping and working for emotion to carve its way through the stone. Not good, not evil, just rough.  
"I'm hear to talk to you about your daughter." Jocasta said.   
Hearing voices from the other room, a woman walked in. She had Petra's tawny hair and she was shining a brass plate.  
"What's she want?" She asked her husband, speaking to him and hardly sparing Jocasta a glance.  
"Wants to talk about the kid."  
The kid. A spark of something angry across her veins.  
"Yes. It has come to my attention today that Petra" - she made sure to use her name, in case they had forgotten it - "is force sensitive."  
The mother's expression didn't change except for a raised eyebrow. She went on polishing her plate. The father huffed what might have been a laugh. "That so?" He said, and it sounded like a challenge.  
"Yes." Jocasta said simply.  
"So what are you talking to us for?"   
No pride, no concern, just playing the endgame. It was definitely anger now.  
"I've been instructed to get permission from the parents to take her to Coruscant, to be trained as a Jedi."  
Now his eyebrows went up.  
"This sounds like a conversation the two of you can handle." The mother said, sounding bored, and she wandered back into the next room. She had never stopped polishing the plate.   
"Take the kid to Coruscant. That so?" He said again, but this time he sounded like he was considering.  
"Yes sir. She would be well looked after, fed, and trained to be a civil servant of the galaxy. She could put her potential to good use, she could learn." Jocasta said, trying to convince him to let her take his child away.  
He looked like he was about to give in and shrug his shoulders, but instead he said something that made the full force of Jocasta's anger bloom inside her chest and, if she was being honest, broke her heart.  
"So, if I give you the kid, uh, you know, what's in it for me? Money - wise, I mean."   
"M-Money wise?" Jocasta repeated, not quite able to process that this man was trying to sell his child.   
"Yeah."  
"There's no- there's no money."  
The man scoffed.  
"Then there's no deal." He said, standing up, wiping his hands on his pants and turning to walk away from her.   
"Do you not care?!" Jocasta yelled, surprising everyone, mostly herself.   
"Excuse me?"  
"Do you not care that your daughter has a gift? Do you not want her to be happy? To use her talents?"  
He just stared at her. The answer was pretty clear.  
"Look," Jocasta said. "If you let me take her, that's one less mouth to feed. One less kid stealing clothes from people's clotheslines. She won't be your problem anymore. That's the best I can do."  
She was still standing just inside the door, and she had her gaze leveled on the man's blue eyes. Petra's were the same, but brighter somehow. Not the butcher blue, but blue like the oceans of the planets she had never seen. She would see them, though, if Jocasta had anything to say about it.  
"Fine." The man grunted. "Take her."

Petra swung her legs on the white bench seat of the shuttle. The air inside was dry and smelled clean, nothing like the earthy scents in the forest she had known all her life. She had seen shuttles and spacecraft before, but never been inside. She knew there were other planets, but she had never seen any. The prospect of leaving suddenly seemed scary. She had no idea what might be out there or where she could be going. She knew the Jedi lived on Coruscant, but she didn't know where that was or what it was like or how long it would take to get there. Everything she knew was from listening to other kids talk about friends of friends whose parents had jobs that brought them off world. Short of taxes and shipping, the Republic didn't have much presence on her planet.  
The fear took a back seat as she imagined all the things she might get to do and all those unknown places she might be able to visit. There were other Jedi on Coruscant and she might get to meet them! She had heard that it was a city, where everything you could possibly imagine was at arms reach, and spaceships fluttered around like moths around a campfire. Never mind that those were campfire stories of their own; she wanted to believe they were true, and that she was going to an exciting place.  
Jocasta had been gone for awhile. She had told her to wait here. She didn't know if here meant in this room or not, so she had stayed here, trying to be on her best behavior so the Jedi would take her to Coruscant. But... as she got more and more bored, she didn't see any reason that 'here' couldn't just be 'the shuttle' and if the were true, she could surely just walk a little ways to see what was behind the corner...   
She had figured out how to open the doors and was trying to put a frog in the cockpit to drive when she felt someone behind her. She turned around, frog in hand, and the smile fell from her face. Jocasta was standing there, looking angry. Before she could say anything, Petra ran and put the frog outside, then sat back down on her bench seat. "Sorry." She mumbled. Jocasta just walked past her into the cockpit to set a course for Coruscant.  
A few hours later, Jocasta returned and sat on the bench. Petra was looking uncharacteristically still. Jocasta felt fear, anxiety about the unknown, all tucked away behind optimism only a six year old could have, and on the surface, sadness.   
"What's wrong?" She asked, from her place across the table, hoping Petra would tell her herself. The pale blue eyes looked up at her - they WERE different from her fathers; Petra had dark rings like a planet on the edge of her iris, and her eyes were infinitely younger.   
"Are you mad at me?" Petra asked her in a smaller voice than she normally used. Jocasta was a little taken aback.  
"No, what makes you think that?" She asked, voice and face even as ever.  
"About the frog, I thought. You looked mad when you came in."   
"I'm not mad at you." She repeated gently. It was all she felt like she had room to say. But she felt the change in Petra's mind and knew she believed her, and that was enough.  
Jocasta remembered, then, how important it was to find force-sensitive children. They, like all children and even more so, are so observant of their surroundings, even if they do not understand what they know, and were so impressionable, even more because they could, in some way, feel the thoughts and emotions of the people around them. It was important that they knew they were special but not anything more than anyone else, that they were empathetic but not easily influenced, and that they could use the force as an ally, not be used by it. Finding and cultivating that balance was the burden of those that trained Jedi, and that was what became painfully clear to Jocasta the day she found her first youngling. No, not her 'first youngling'. The day she found Petra.  
Petra, who was standing at the shuttle's small windows and seeing the universe for the first time. She saw the black of space and it was a pure, dark black that she had never seen before. She saw more stars than she ever imagined there could be, and knew they all had planets around them, and on those planets were people that had lives and that she could now visit and talk to and even as she saw how small she was, she was going to Coruscant and she had made friends with a Jedi (maybe. She hoped that she and Jocasta were friends) and there were billions of planets with billions of people, and she felt all at once like she wasn't alone.  
Jocasta felt the broader strokes of Petra's thoughts from her place in the cockpit, and by the time she went back to check on her, Petra was asleep, mouth open, forehead against the window in a way that would definitely make anyone who wasn't six sore in the morning. Jocasta just smiled and returned to what she had been doing.

It was years before it occurred to Petra why Jocasta had been mad that day. Jocasta had been mad for her- mad at her parents for trying to sell her, for not taking care of her like they should have. She thought it and felt a rush of affection for Jocasta, now an old librarian, for protecting her when no one else did, and in that simple act teaching her how to be a Jedi in the most basic way. The wave reached across the universe and in the library Jocasta's severe mouth twitched into a smile at the thought of a six year old with a frog.


End file.
